Geeked: Scatterbrained for spring

The weather’s getting nicer, and I’m finding it hard to focus on just one thing — and as a result, you’re getting something like four columns in one. You’re welcome.

Piiiiiiigs in spaaaaace

The Angry Birds have been to Rio, they’ve been to North Pole, they’ve celebrated holidays and they’ve been downloaded more than 700 million times to our various iThings and other devices.

And as of last week, they’ve made it to space.

Rovio, the maker of what is arguably the biggest mobile game franchise in the history of the genre, released Angry Birds Space on Thursday, and the game delivers some fun new twists to the familiar plot.

The birds are still chasing their eggs, which are still in the clutches of the evil green pigs. The birds still do what they do, knocking stuff down, breaking glass and generally making piggie life difficult.

What’s different? Gravity. Or the lack thereof.

You’ll see the borders of gravitation fields around the asteroids where the pigs have taken up home; as you prepare to fire your birds, you’ll also see a projected trajectory and how it will be changed by whatever gravity fields are nearby. Shots curve in Angry Birds Space, and that’s something you have to take into account.

I’d gone through just a few levels before I had to write, but I’ve already come across levels where your shots go through a couple different levels of gravity; so far, that’s a little like trying to shoot pool on a moving table — it’s a challenge, yes, but figuring out orbits, re-entries and weightless bounces promises to be fun for a long time.

The new game comes at at good time for Rovio. It had been releasing a steady series of updates to the franchise — Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio — but an update is not a new version. The last month has been dominated by Draw Something, the Pictionary-esque drawing game that sits atop the most recent list of best-selling apps. Angry Birds needed a refresher, and I think it got one with Angry Birds Space.

Apple upstages itself

If you’re the richest company on the planet, how do you upstage the release of an update to one of your biggest gadgets?

You announce you’re going to issue a dividend for the first time.

What? That’s better than release of the Don’t Call It An iPad 3?

Apple’s announcement last week of its first-ever dividend and stock-buyback programs were a big deal because the company had never, ever done such a traditional, big-stuffy-corporation kind of thing before.

Why? One word, apparently: Jobs. The late Steve viewed shareholders as a bother — at best — and was never interested in running Apple the way the suits at, say, GM always had. Jobs’ successor, Tim Cook, isn’t a suit, but is a more traditional business-school-graduate sort of guy, and dividends are part of what those guys do.

The other business-school-graduate types liked the announcement, by the way; Apple’s stock closed Monday, the day of the proclamation, at more than $600 a share — more money for the world’s richest corporation.

PennDOT speaks

You don’t necessarily have to be high tech to be valuable these days, and PennDOT definitely isn’t — at least not in its efforts to communicate with the public.

It is, however, effective, especially as we get closer to the what promises to be a very busy road construction season.

If you want updates on what’s gunking up the roads you regularly drive, you should visit http://511pa.com, PennDOT’s road conditions site. You’ll see breaking updates there — construction, accidents, emergency activity and the like — but once you sign up for a free account, you can also have specific updates emailed directly to you.

Options? PennDOT gives you options. You can opt to receive all updates by county — and what with the scheduled construction projects in Allegheny County alone, that could be a bunch. Even better, you can opt to receive updates on specific highways — helpful if you, say, stick to Route 65 for your commute and you want only information for that road — or specific stretches of highway — good if you use the Parkway West portion of Interstate 376 but not the Parkway East, for example.

And if you want to turn on the fire hose, that is, if you want all the updates from the PennDOT district that covers Beaver, Allegheny and Lawrence counties, try the district’s Twitter account: http://twitter.com/511papittsburgh.

As big government goes, PennDOT is among the biggest. But in this case, big government is doing a nice job of keeping its constituents informed — even if they’re not the most tech-y people around.